


I'm A Coward Til The End

by Ffwydriad



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes-centric, Character Study, Gen, Multiple Personalities, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, World War II, arguably canon compliant given the fact we don't actually get bucky's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 18:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14858211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ffwydriad/pseuds/Ffwydriad
Summary: James Buchanan Barnes is perhaps the deadliest assassin in human history.One slight problem: he's never fought a day in his life.





	I'm A Coward Til The End

**Author's Note:**

> super short drabble but i wanted to get the concept out of my head so hear you go

It’s 1942. James Buchanan Barnes has enlisted in the United States Army. He’s never fought a day in his life.

That isn’t what anyone would say about him. The people in training, they’ve watched him fight, and they think he’s good. A little vicious, but always knows when to stop, which is better than a lot of people. Didn’t need much practice at hand to hand, and boy was he a natural shot.

The kids back home, they know him as a brawler. Mostly to protect skinny ol’ Steve Rogers, who can’t fight worth a damn, no matter how often he tries. They’ve seen him fight, seen him pummel guys in to the ground.

But they’re all wrong. Because Bucky’s never fought before, and he isn’t sure he knows how.

 

* * *

 

He remembers the fights. Not well, they disappear quick, and they’re always foggy, but he can remember them. It always feels two steps back, though. He’s just watching, and his body’s the one busy doling out punches, taking the beating. He kneels down in the dirt and aims for the shot, but he never remembers actually pulling the trigger, it just always seems to happen.

Maybe it’s a blessing. He’s seen men who came home from the last war, brains shot to bits, even if their bodies were fine. He’s glad, really. The war’s leaving marks on everyone, but he’s getting out unscathed by the blood. After all, it’s hard to feel guilty, when you aren’t even doing the killing.

Maybe it’s some sort of Jekyll and Hyde thing. But at least his monster isn’t bloodthirsty. His monster talks like he does, laughs like he does, and stops like he hopes he would.

There’s the chance, he supposes, that this is normal, that fighting and killing sends everyone in to a mindlessness, that it isn’t strange, but no one's ever talked about it, and he's been surrounded by fighters, by brawlers and boxers and soldiers, all his life. He doesn’t ask anyone, has never asked anyone. He doesn’t want to sound crazy.

 

* * *

 

One day, he wakes up, and Steve is big, and he doesn’t know how long he’s been under for. And they head through a building on fire, and there’s a man with no skin, and Steve, and can’t remember anything from the last few days, from before the battle began. He tries, and all it does is make him feel like he’s about to throw up.

James Buchanan Barnes is one of the most well known soldiers in the US Army, standing side by side with Steve, with Captain America, his smile broad as he stands next to Steve, pictures plastered on movie screens and posters all around the country. But he’s never fought a day in his life, and he’s starting to feel like a con artist, as the war wages on, and he sees the scars that are forming on the rest of the Howling Commandos.

Either he stops trying to remember the fighting, or he stops being able to. It doesn’t matter. Now, he’s gone more than not, and he isn’t even aiming. That’s all the other guy, now, and he feels like he’s ghosting.

He talks about what happens, and no one notices that he’s not quite there on the details. Not that they talk about that too much, and that’s alright with him.

Steve doesn’t notice, and that’s fine with him. Steve has enough on his plate without dealing with all his issues.

 

* * *

 

James Buchanan Barnes has never killed a man in his life. Except, that’s not true, because he’s always left with the bodies.

A man with his kill count can’t be squeamish, though. So calm on the battlefield, but panicked and vomiting afterwards, now that’s suspicious as all hell.

He’s never been big on drinking, because Steve used to not be able to drink much, well at all, and so going out drinking meant going out with girls, or with Steve, and he'd only have one or two, never even getting past tipsy. 

Here, though, it’s the only thing to get rid of the panic, and even if it doesn’t stop the vomiting, at least it hides the reason. So after the battles, he does what they all do, and he goes to the bar and gets drunk off his ass and lets Steve pretend this is what the army’s made him into, not the war.

First time he meets Howard Stark is at a bar. Sure, he’s seen the guy around, but Howard Stark, genius, millionaire, he may have a reason to hang out with the shining Captain America, but he’s got no reason for the rest of their sorry lot.

Now, Stark’s a drunk. An alcoholic, as the temperance ladies would say. Spends every night in the bar, and never seems sober, only drunk or hungover. But hey, by all accounts, Bucky’d be an alcoholic too, and so would every other guy on the front. The difference is Stark’s not the one pulling the trigger. No, he’s just the one making the weapons. Bucky wonders if that’s worse. The death toll may be indirect, but it’s way higher.

He thinks about that a lot, when they sit side by side, staring in to glasses and drowning worries as the rest of the bar celebrates still being alive. 

 

* * *

 

James Buchanan Barnes has never killed a man. But there’s a chance he’s killed more people - with his own hands, own weapons, own gun, no bombs, no wars, no diseases - than anyone else in history.

He’s killed presidents, he’s killed dictators, he’s killed soldiers, he’s killed innocents, he’s killed people good and bad, old and young, and he’s nearly killed Steve.

And now, now he sits in silence, hiding as far away from Steve as he can. He could turn himself in, to the government, to Shield, to whoever it is he could turn himself into, and try and plead innocent.

Hey, I’m not actually the guy you’re looking for, because despite the impressive war record, massive hit list as an assassin, and impressive street cred back in Brooklyn, I’ve never actually fought a day in my life. That’s all another guy in my head who takes over, and who I can’t remember, and who now works for Hydra, which definitely keeps me up at night because a ton of people want me dead and the only version of me who knows how to fight was brainwashed into being a Nazi.

Steve’d take it. Then again, Steve’d take anything.

He doesn’t turn himself in. He doesn’t tell anyone.

 

* * *

 

The first time he ever says it out loud is in Wakanda. Wakanda, where he doesn't need to fight. Wakanda, where no one will judge him, not for this. Wakanda, where Steve will never know, will never look on with regret at how he missed such a crucial detail.

It's slow, at first, his voice so unused to talking, so long since he's been himself, and then the words come tumbling out, things he'd thought and wondered, and things he'd feared. Things he never thought he'd say, things he'd never known he'd wanted to.

And then, he asks, something he wonders if he should have asked a long time ago.

"Can you teach me how to fight?"


End file.
